DRM error causes problems for legitimate Game Maker users

Popular development tool overwrites user-made assets with a skull and crossbones.

Another day, another example of a DRM scheme punishing legitimate users instead of actually stopping people from pirating software. The newest case comes from Game Maker Studio, a popular game prototyping and development tool that is reportedly adding an unremovable skull and crossbones symbol to some users' created images.

The Game Maker Blog recently reported widespread complaints from Game Maker Studio users who saw the international pirate symbol unexpectedly and irreversibly added to the assets they created for their projects. The move, meant to discourage piracy, was instead ruining the hard work of people who had paid anywhere from $50 to $500 for a legitimate version of the software.

Some users suspected a recent downloadable update for Game Maker Studio might be responsible for the problem. Mike Dailly, an employee of Game Maker creator Yoyo Games, instead suggested virus scanners or other programs may be modifying the Game Maker EXE file, causing the DRM scheme to misidentify it as a pirated copy.

In any case, Dailly says Yoyo Games will be issuing an update to fix the issue while it transitions to more passive protection methods in the future (hopefully removing the possibility that legitimate users will see their work ruined). Despite the issue, Dailly doesn't forsee the company removing DRM from its products altogether.

"Game Maker has traditionally been one of the most pirated programs around, and it’s simply not right that some pay good money for it, while others simply pirate it," he wrote. "We’d LOVE to be able to remove the protection completely, but we know that vast numbers would simply copy it if it was that easy."

["Game Maker has traditionally been one of the most pirated programs around, and it’s simply not right that some pay good money for it, while others simply pirate it," he wrote. "We’d LOVE to be able to remove the protection completely, but we know that vast numbers would simply copy it if it was that easy."

So, if they remove the copy protection, people would just download it from bit-torrent and piracy sites?

So, in other words, the people who actually paid you real money for a real product suffer, but the pirates, as always, don't. Great thinking there.

You are focusing on the wrong people; you're inventing an arbitrary 'unauthorized enjoyment' crime, and using your code to punish "perpetrators", when they haven't actually taken anything from you. If they made a copy of your program, so freaking what? It cost you absolutely nothing; you still have everything you always had. They used their own bandwidth and their own time.

Focus less on punishing people who haven't actually deprived you of anything, and more on rewarding people that give you money, and you'll probably do much better.

I'd actually thought about picking this up during the Steam sale; that brought it onto my radar, and had it gone on sale again during the Christmas season, I might have picked it up, to experiment with. Now I definitely will not be doing that, just as I will never buy Garry's Mod.

You got to love it when paying customers get shafted. Companies need to realize if their method ends up ostracizing their own paying user base. Its time to rethink their strategy. I am looking at you Mr. Game Company which shutsdown the game after a minor hiccup in the internet. You know who you are.

Mike Dailly, an employee of Game Maker creator Yoyo Games, instead suggested virus scanners or other programs may be modifying the Game Maker EXE file, causing the DRM scheme to misidentify it as a pirated copy.

According to the link, he said virus', not virus scanners. But regardless, that's ridiculous. A virus that just so happens to target your games EXE, somehow ending up on legitimate user's machines? They don't understand computers, piracy, or people.

Nevermind that pirated software, in general, will also remove this kind of ridiculous DRM protection. This kind of DRM usually affects legitimate users (or those who get a crack that hasn't been updated or is released by a terrible group, but still... chances are it'll hit legitimate users).

But anyways, please fix the article. I was about to hang the guy who thought virus scanners changed the games' EXE. Virus... well, he's not right in this case, but less wrong than I thought.

How about just using Steam DRM? It's really light duty and easy to crack, and that's a feature, not a bug. The people who want to buy it will buy it, and the people who don't want to buy it will still pirate it. And the people, like me, that don't like even light DRM, will often accept it, because we know it's easy to crack if Valve or a related company ever goes tits-up or sells out to EA or something.

I've never cracked a Steam game, but knowing that it's easily possible is much of why I'm a Valve customer. If they got at all onerous with it, I'd stop buying.

I tried GameMaker back in the day, but lost it to a data wipe which necessitated a request for re-activation. They never got back to me about it, so I never bothered trying again. That was before the buy-out from Yoyo games, even.

Game Maker has traditionally been one of the most pirated programs around, and it’s simply not right that some pay good money for it, while others simply pirate it

That's nonsense old-school thinking. If people get value from a program and can, they should pay for it. It makes no difference what other people are doing or how many people have pirated it. Piracy is a force of nature, and from the few unbiased studies done seems to have little to no impact on sales. Focus on making your customers happy and ignore the pirates, or better yet, encourage them. Especially for a tool like this, the more people who know how to use it, the more sales they are going to get, even if those sales are only a small portion of the userbase.

“I totally understand that those who have paid for GameMaker and are getting this are feeling very upset by the whole matter, and I can only apologize for the problems. We try hard to make it as smooth an experience as possible for paying users, but are constantly fighting pirates’ understanding of the protection systems,” he explained.

“We’d LOVE to be able to remove the protection completely, but we know that vast numbers would simply copy it if it was that easy. A certain number will NEVER buy – EVER! These folks are basically crooks, and you can not count these as lost sales. No matter how ‘cheap’ you make it, some will simply never buy.

“We simply don’t care about them, but if I can piss them off, I will,” Dailly added.

I love how in one breath he laments people pirating the software, while in the next he admits that most of them will never ever buy the software no matter what (so, no sale is no sale regardless of whether or not piracy is involved). Then he goes on to say how he doesn't care about the pirates, only to contradict himself in the same sentence where he desires to piss off the pirates (but fails to recognize he only pissed off legit purchasers).

You got to love it when paying customers get shafted. Companies need to realize if their method ends up ostracizing their own paying user base. Its time to rethink their strategy. I am looking at you Mr. Game Company which shutsdown the game after a minor hiccup in the internet. You know who you are.

I am currently dreading having to call Adobe because my legal copy of Creative Suite 3 decided to spontaneously deactivate itself (well it didn't actually deactivate itself with Adobe, but as far as it's concerned it hasn't been activated and it won't let me activate it again online). That should be fun having to prove something I've bought is mine!

In the past I've been kicked out of single player games and lost unsaved progress due to always on DRM glitching (C&C4), denied from playing games I've pre-ordered until they were officially released (store bought version of Steamworks game) and also had programs which haven't run or have crashed due to DRM. In fact it's frightening how often my Android games claim they're not legitimate because they can't connect to the activation server due to poor signal.

What I've learned:- Do your best to avoid buying programs from companies such as Adobe with terrible implementations of DRM.- Don't pre-order games as you'll often still have to wait to use the physical product in your hand. In fact, since DRM turns software into effectively a rental, try to only buy games when they are at the cheapest they are likely to get in a sale. I stopped caring about developers precisely when they started treating me as a criminal.- Do buy indie and non-DRM'd games and pay more for them than you do the DRM'd games to thank the developer for trusting you not to be a criminal.- Try to remember to donate to developers of open source / free applications you use regularly.- Seek out non-DRM'd media / buy direct from creators because usually most of the money goes to the people producing the content rather than middle men.- Where possible with MAFIAA produced content buy it second hand so that your money isn't going to these evil companies.

To summarise, don't let these screwy companies stop you enjoying what you like but try to acquire it in a way that reflects its diminished DRM'd value and ideally doesn't see any of your money going to them at all.

Having said that, given what I've just posted, it's hardly surprising many people just take the simplest route to instant gratification and working products and just pirate is it?

You got to love it when paying customers get shafted. Companies need to realize if their method ends up ostracizing their own paying user base. Its time to rethink their strategy. I am looking at you Mr. Game Company which shutsdown the game after a minor hiccup in the internet. You know who you are.

The Torrent Freak article has some choice quotes, too.“(..). A certain number will NEVER buy – EVER! These folks are basically crooks, and you can not count these as lost sales. (...)” Dailly added.

Some people will take your hard-earned cash in exchange for software, and then disable the software. Those folks are basically crooks, and you should NEVER buy - EVER - their products. It will only encourage them.

Game Maker has traditionally been one of the most pirated programs around, and it’s simply not right that some pay good money for it, while others simply pirate it

That's nonsense old-school thinking. If people get value from a program and can, they should pay for it. It makes no difference what other people are doing or how many people have pirated it.

I don't see what's nonsense, since you're still entirely in agreement.

Quote:

Piracy is a force of nature, and from the few unbiased studies done seems to have little to no impact on sales. Focus on making your customers happy and ignore the pirates, or better yet, encourage them. Especially for a tool like this, the more people who know how to use it, the more sales they are going to get, even if those sales are only a small portion of the userbase.

You've drifted from a discussion of what's right and wrong to a discussion of what one does about it. It's a fair discussion to have, but entirely separate from the first.

Not sure how many people agree, but for me convenience is a much larger reason to pirate than how much it costs. Dealing with this crap after I've paid for it is just crap.

Agreed. I buy a lot of legal games for PC and crack them immediately, because I don't like some onerous DRM scheme telling me that I have to leave an easily scratched disc in the drive spinning around while i am playing the game which ALREADY installed everything or near everything to the hard drive.

A few months ago, there was a span of several weeks where a smurf(s) was spamming nearly every submission to Slashdot with phony comment hype about GameMaker; virtually none of the articles even had any relevance to GameMaker. There was perhaps a dozen freshly-minted user accounts involved; he/they would use one account to make an initial comment promoting GameMaker, and then use other smurf accounts to reply, making it appear to be actual dialog and interest where none existed, trying to create "buzz". I found the same thing being perpetrated on other sites like Yahoo Answers.

It seems like an odd thing for an uncompensated individual to do with his time. If anyone from Yoyo Games was behind it, that would seem to fit a pattern of bad decisions being made attempting to further its own interests.

“We simply don’t care about them, but if I can piss them off, I will,” Dailly added.

Proof (if any were needed) that large parts of the anti-piracy brigade are not actually concerned with protecting their revenue or getting paid for their work. They're motivated instead by a childish desire to take revenge for a perceived slight.

Minecraft creator Notch believes that if fans can't afford his game, they should just download it illegally.

There's a reason so many PC gamers love the indie scene.

Although it's kinda makes sense though. Some of the reasons people pirate (or so I personally believe anyway) are for 1. Convenience and 2. Cost. When someone with very little income can't afford to buy your game, it might arguably be more beneficial to yourself as a game maker to "encourage" them to download it illegally so they can at least contribute to building your fanbase, or make it very affordable. Though a balance needs to be struck in this line of thinking, since this doesn't really work with beat-it-once-and-never-playing-it-again games...

Then there's the thing with convenience. Have a personal pet peeve where I always worry that by the time I come around to buying a game when it's cheaper, it would be out of print, hard to find, or breaks. Have a long term and user friendly strategy in game distribution, and people may be less inclined to pirate a copy for hoarding and later use.

“We simply don’t care about them, but if I can piss them off, I will,” Dailly added.

Proof (if any were needed) that large parts of the anti-piracy brigade are not actually concerned with protecting their revenue or getting paid for their work. They're motivated instead by a childish desire to take revenge for a perceived slight.

The sense of entitlement displayed by some devs is sickening.

Um, they kind of are entitled to money for their products, and using their product without paying for it is a slight. Now whether DRM is in any way an effective or smart remedy to the problem is another matter, and whether being spiteful is in any way a productive attitude seems dubious. But devs are well within their rights to grumble about piracy. Just as legit users are well within their rights to grumble about DRM wrecking their work.

“We simply don’t care about them, but if I can piss them off, I will,” Dailly added.

Proof (if any were needed) that large parts of the anti-piracy brigade are not actually concerned with protecting their revenue or getting paid for their work. They're motivated instead by a childish desire to take revenge for a perceived slight.

The sense of entitlement displayed by some devs is sickening.

Um, they kind of are entitled to money for their products, and using their product without paying for it is a slight. Now whether DRM is in any way an effective or smart remedy to the problem is another matter, and whether being spiteful is in any way a productive attitude seems dubious. But devs are well within their rights to grumble about piracy. Just as legit users are well within their rights to grumble about DRM wrecking their work.

The level of unintentional hilariousness in this guy's reasoning is akin to the famous lines from Catch 22. Your crazy if you fly, and shouldn't fly, but if you know you shouldn't fly your not crazy and should fly.

So the program is one of the most pirated programs according to this very intelligent individual so that means they have to include DRM that hurts their paying customers? Because that DRM is stopping people from... enjoying their legally purchased program while the people pirating it are free from having their work ruined?

Either these guys are very, very stupid, or they are lying about their reasons for DRM. Personally I wish I knew what was going on in their heads.

FWIW, Adobe is very, very good about handling reactivation requests when their DRM hits paying customers. I've been using it since CS3 and have had to call twice and it's been a very easy process. Microsoft has been the same way. I had one problem with Apple DRM and got that fixed quickly as well.

Too few companies, though, follow their lead. In my cases, I've used DRMed software for 4-5 years and been bitten a handful of times, only to call in with very short call times to fix things. But especially with games, I hear tons of complaints of people getting blocked and being unable to get things fixed without a big and public hassle. Companies need to realize (as companies did in the 8-bit computer days) that copy protection and DRM are speed bumps to people who really want to pirate your stuff, and you need to make sure that things are as easy as possible for your paying customers.

So, here are the things I think make that work:

1) Make DRM lenient. Don't require an online check every run, or even worse DURING use. The Adobe CS6 once a month thing isn't so bad, since it tries in the background and will only bug you if it can't phone home for a month.

2) Make DRM easy to fix. DRM is like anything else in software, it will break. But unlike, say, the automatic calendar function, DRM is designed to shut down all functions. So make it easy to fix. Give us a dedicated 1-800 line to the people who can reset the DRM. Make it possible to reset the DRM in the first place. And err on the side of trust when people call in: few pirates are going to be calling in.

3) Limit the damage! When DRM goes wrong (and it will) make sure it's easy to recover from. Don't lose the user's data. Don't damage things thinking that it will only piss off pirates: it will hit some small percent of paying customers and will get you a ton of bad publicity.

So basically, if you want DRM, make sure it doesn't have a hair trigger, make sure it doesn't break my files, and make sure I can get it fixed with a 5-10 minute phone call.

I'm one of the die hard customers who purchased GameMaker: HTML5 when it was in BETA (for $99, under the promise of a discount on GameMaker: Studio when it launched).

I purchased the GameMaker: Studio Android and iOS modules for $199 EACH on release. My total investment in Yoyogames at this point is $500.

Thismorning, I wake up to find my project of nearly a year has completely destroyed assets, as in, all the sprites have these goddamn skulls and crossbones on them... my legitimately installed version of the program. Yoyo has the gall to nonchalantly claim everyone has a virus. Yeah, my Windows 8 machine I installed a week or two ago has a virus...

I used to be a pirate. When I was younger and had no disposable income, I would pirate games, software, movies, whatever. These days I buy things because, hey, I have the money, and I should buy what I use right? But you know what - I never had an issue with DRM before I became a paying customer.

Today, I was planning on releasing my first app for both Android and iOS - the culmination of a year of hard work. Only to discover all my precious assets were covered in skulls and crossbones. Yeah, I have backups. So now, instead of releasing as planned today, I will spend the next few days trying to piece my project back together from my last backup from two days ago (during crunch time... you make a lot of changes).

Avoid Yoyogames and their product. There are far better alternatives out there. It's a crowded market and their product is overpriced and offers nothing but contempt for paying customers.

Minecraft creator Notch believes that if fans can't afford his game, they should just download it illegally.

There's a reason so many PC gamers love the indie scene.

Although it's kinda makes sense though. Some of the reasons people pirate (or so I personally believe anyway) are for 1. Convenience and 2. Cost. When someone with very little income can't afford to buy your game, it might arguably be more beneficial to yourself as a game maker to "encourage" them to download it illegally so they can at least contribute to building your fanbase, or make it very affordable. Though a balance needs to be struck in this line of thinking, since this doesn't really work with beat-it-once-and-never-playing-it-again games...

Then there's the thing with convenience. Have a personal pet peeve where I always worry that by the time I come around to buying a game when it's cheaper, it would be out of print, hard to find, or breaks. Have a long term and user friendly strategy in game distribution, and people may be less inclined to pirate a copy for hoarding and later use.

I have two responses to your two reasons. One is cost. People not being able to afford something is all relative. People have different priories and some people would rather spend their money on a new gpu than a $59.99 game. So they could have afforded the game, they just preferred to buy the gpu. Now perhaps that uses up their discretionary spending budget. Was it ok for them download the game b/c they can't afford it after buying the gpu? At what point does it become ok? If they eat out twice a month instead of buying a game and otherwise have only money for rent and utilities then is it ok? I don't make very much money at all but I do buy games and other software I enjoy using. I make the choice to forgo other goods and services to make these purchases.

Now sometimes pirated copies of your software can be a good thing for developers. If your product is new, if you don't have a large marketing budget, then word of mouth from people who pirated your product may drive more sales. If you are Ubisoft on the other hand and you have a multi-million dollar marketing budget for your latest Assassin's Creed game then word of mouth from pirated copies will probably do nothing for your bottom line.

Now the industry tends to really over-blow the "lost sale" argument, especially as a reason for heavy and draconian DRM. They posit that they need the DRM to protect against piracy and point to the millions of downloads as proof. All the while the irony of the existence of millions of downloads despite the heaviest of DRM seems to escape otherwise smart people.

The only way to compete with piracy is to offer convenience. How do you do that? Well GOG.com has a good handle on that. I can hop on any Internet connected computer, log into my account and download any of the 40+ games I have purchased from them. I can install that game then or I can put the installer on my flash drive and install it later or install on it on another computer without Internet access. I don't have to worry about the files being infected nor do I have to worry about a possibly complicated crack. GOG.com has a product that is more convenient than piracy. For that fact it is my first choice when buying games. Of course so many publishers are hung up on DRM that they are afraid to put their titles on their platform.

Ubisoft went in a very draconian direction with their DRM and saw a little bit of a backlash and some lower sales. Despite their claim that it was effective what was the latest word from them? That they were doing away with all that and going to a one time activation per install. The more draconian DRM made their paid product more inconvenient for paying customers than the pirate version, thus they drove some people to pirate it and some people, like me, to just avoid the products altogether.

The evidence exists that DRM is not effective as an anti-piracy method and that sales can actually increase when you strip away the DRM. GOG.com games have no DRM yet their versions are consistently the LEAST pirated version on torrent sites while at the same time have driven many sales on games that people would have thought couldn't generate anymore sales. That shows just the lack of DRM in and of itself is something at least some consumers value. I think we are trending that way and while we may not see DRM disappear the worst forms of it are on the way out I think.

Some of the people that had their hard work ruined need to sue the pants off these idiots. Until they start PAYING for their evil, they will keep doing it, as this moron's quotes clearly show.

Some of these guys get so worked up about people pirating their stuff that they'd rather screw over their paying customers than stop what they view as their never ending war against the 'bad pirates who are STEALING my game'.

There's a certain naval wargame developer that is infamous for this. And what happens to those folks? People just stop buying their games. It's self correcting to a certain extent, since those idiots tend to go out of business. But sometimes it takes a long time.

In this case, where people were not just getting enjoyment from a game, but actually developing games, in many cases to sell,and in some cases doing so for their livelihood AND had that work ruined by these morons' idea of 'getting back at those PIRATES', the morons need to be shown what liability there is for negligent damage. IANAL, but this is probably a case were having one bring the hammer down will be better for all of us in the long run.

You got to love it when paying customers get shafted. Companies need to realize if their method ends up ostracizing their own paying user base. Its time to rethink their strategy. I am looking at you Mr. Game Company which shutsdown the game after a minor hiccup in the internet. You know who you are.

I can relate to that!Me being a bit paranoid about what my ISP is deep-package gleaning off my web usage (I work as an IAM/INFOSEC guy at larger corps) I use a VPN a lot.Steam has MAJOR issues with privacy VPNs, and automatically assume, if you use a privacy VPN, you're attempting credit card fraud.this was my experience with Steam support:[...]###1 Message by you on Sun, 25th Nov 2012 7:25 amI'm unable to purchase a game. I have NO Idea WHY (why can't I ? My MasterCard is accepted at Google Wallet/Checkout and PayPal even - I know because I just bought an app on Google Play store about 1-2 hours ago!)see attached pictures.Worse, what about my intended purchase, since the sale of 4-pack of my intended purchase is running out TODAY? Considering the problem is on your back-end.

Our records indicate that you are attempting a purchase through an anonymous proxy.

In the future, to avoid having your account disabled for fraudulent activity, please do not use IP Proxies when purchasing.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

###3 Message by you on Wed, 28th Nov 2012 1:33 amthat is unfortunate that you automatically judgingly presume, I attempt/execute fraudulent activity by using a VPN ISP. Considering my job is being an IAM / INFOSEC consultant, as such I am not a fan of IP GEO location as a means to verify if someones purchase is legit or not.Nevertheless I find it rather preposterous that a seemingly larger corporation as Steam appears to be has no sales/billing support over the weekend, WHEN MOST OF YOUR SALES/SPECIALS ARE HAPPENING. (I strongly urge you consider this as a service improvement suggestion!)Bottom-line, you lost several sales because of it, we (our LAN party) went to another vendor (namely Stardock/Impulse/GameStop) who did NOT have any quarrels to purchase several items at once through my "don't track me"-VPN ISP.Matter of fact, after the second purchase with same Credit card We just got an email stating that a billing person is reviewing our 3rd purchase and it'd take 1 business day to do so. Lo and behold, 2 hours later that purchase was cleared - ON A SUNDAY OF THE THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!

I call that excellent customer service for real gamers.

Seriously, I understand that you're afraid of exploitation of account hijackings and credit card fraud - they'll happen; one way or another - But don't do it on the cost and convenience of the honest, paying customers. It's common knowledge that in this day and age games/music/movies are very easily obtained without paying for them. If you fear losses due to fraud, compensate it by an offset of additional 50 cents per sale. People wont be upset about it if their gaming experience and convenience aren't hobbled too much. That it's doable otherwise is proven by your competition - monolithic structures never work in life.

have a good onecheers@[...]Yes, i'm pissed at Steam because of above mentioned assumption from their end and lack of customer service when they've their major sales on the weekends. Am yet to receive a reply - doubt though I'll ever get one - yet the support ticket is still open.MAJOR KUDOS though for the StarDock/Impulse company for their fast response and making things happen!

I'm one of the die hard customers who purchased GameMaker: HTML5 when it was in BETA (for $99, under the promise of a discount on GameMaker: Studio when it launched).

I purchased the GameMaker: Studio Android and iOS modules for $199 EACH on release. My total investment in Yoyogames at this point is $500.

Thismorning, I wake up to find my project of nearly a year has completely destroyed assets, as in, all the sprites have these goddamn skulls and crossbones on them... my legitimately installed version of the program. Yoyo has the gall to nonchalantly claim everyone has a virus. Yeah, my Windows 8 machine I installed a week or two ago has a virus...

I used to be a pirate. When I was younger and had no disposable income, I would pirate games, software, movies, whatever. These days I buy things because, hey, I have the money, and I should buy what I use right? But you know what - I never had an issue with DRM before I became a paying customer.

Today, I was planning on releasing my first app for both Android and iOS - the culmination of a year of hard work. Only to discover all my precious assets were covered in skulls and crossbones. Yeah, I have backups. So now, instead of releasing as planned today, I will spend the next few days trying to piece my project back together from my last backup from two days ago (during crunch time... you make a lot of changes).

Avoid Yoyogames and their product. There are far better alternatives out there. It's a crowded market and their product is overpriced and offers nothing but contempt for paying customers.

That is truly terrible and I am sorry for your troubles. I wish someone like you would sue them over this, as it seems a pretty open and shut case to this layman and these people won't stop until it costs them money and bad press. Which it already does so maybe they'll never stop.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.